In the months since he left office, former President Donald Trump has doubled down on especially dangerous rhetoric and at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona recently, he threatened violence against Democrats and others who “stole” the election. He repeated contentions about the “big lie” and spiced that up with a new conspiracy theory about “routers” while at the same time bathing in his white victimhood, Raw Story reports.

A crowd of his followers basked in his words but the mainstream media treated the rally as little more than a blip on the radar, and this is worrisome, notes Chauncey DeVega.

“This reflects a logic where if Trump and his neofascist movement are ignored, the danger will go away. It will not,” he writes.

And DeVega isn’t the only one concerned about this. Some in the psychiatric community are also worried. Dr, David Reiss, a psychiatrist is an expert in mental fitness evaluations and a contributor to The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump has this to say:

“People are expressing the opinion that Donald Trump is deteriorating be it emotionally and/or cognitively. I have not evaluated him, so I have neither a clinical baseline nor an acute clinical opinion. But I know what I see and what I hear,” he writes. “This all leads me to one conclusion: As a person and regarding any possible ‘diagnoses,’ Trump is mostly unchanged. Unhappier? Almost certainly. Angrier? Without a doubt. He also appears to be vengeful, vindictive, and sadistic to a dangerous level. What is new about that?”

“Trump has always relied on inventing reality extemporaneously to fit his mood and to connect with his audience,” Reiss explains. “He has always had an expertise in that area, such that by now it comes naturally and without planning. He has always been very ‘strategic’ in the moment — but not much further down the road than a few minutes into the future.”

“CNN recently featured a headline that read ‘This is the most unhinged Trump rant about the 2020 election yet,” Reiss noted. “Trump is lying more, but Trump is not ‘more unhinged.’ Trump has always responded to being uncomfortable with reality by inventing his own reality to meet his needs. He is more uncomfortable with objective reality since November 4, so of course he is increasingly inventing different ‘realities’ that are even less grounded in reason and reality than the ones previous.”

We have been dealing with this all along. Trump has always been shrill, bellicose, and short-tempered. His vengefulness and cruel vindictiveness resonate with his followers, meaning that all of his nastiness is on full blast. If it weren’t for his rabid followers, his hate would be worth ignoring, but these people amplify it and this furor continues to grow, as it seems to be doing, fascism will continue to be alive and well in the U.S.